The present invention relates to a monitoring control system and, more particularly, to a monitoring control system in an optical transmission system.
Recently, an expansion of a wide-band ISDN based on the globally unified user network interface has been requested, and the Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) capable of uniformly multiplying the various high-speed services and the existing low-speed services has been standardized. In this trend, various type of the communications apparatuses in accordance with the SDH system are developed, and large-capacity optical submarine cables are laid among the countries to mutually connect the SDH communications apparatuses provided in the respective countries.
The SDH is based on the communications using the optical fibers, and its large capacity allows transmission and reception of various control information items to be provided among the communications apparatuses. Taking advantage of this characteristic, the network connecting the communications apparatuses of the various countries to one another in the shape of a ring is constructed and provided in actual use, from the viewpoint of the resistance to the failure and the simple maintenance.
In such an international ring network system, the communications carriers of the various countries cooperate to operate the network. That is, each of the communications carriers has at least one monitor and control apparatus, and uses this to monitor the communications apparatus in the network and the network itself and execute various setting.
However, the international ring network system has a specific problem and the following one has been pointed. That is, in the above-mentioned system, the access of the monitor and control apparatuses to the communications apparatuses has not been limited to allow the communications carriers to cooperate the network. In other words, access of the monitor and control apparatus of any company to the communications apparatuses of the other companies has been unlimitedly permitted.
Furthermore, the monitor and control apparatuses have the same function for all the communications apparatuses that are to be monitored and controlled. That is, since the monitoring and controlling function for the communications apparatus in a station A (in country A) is not different from that for the communications apparatus in a station B (in country B), access to all the functions of each communications apparatus can be made.
However, each communications carrier wants to prevent some of specifically operated functions (such as an alarm generation function) in its communications apparatus from being accessed by the monitor and control apparatuses of the other countries. For this reason, it is necessary to limit the access in some manners, but the system meeting such a request has not yet been known.
In addition, in the conventional monitor and control terminal in the optical communications system, when failure is monitored, a summary screen of each optical transmission station apparatus (hereinafter called a monitored apparatus) is formed on the basis of the predetermined apparatus configuration and displayed.
In such a monitor and control terminal if the apparatus configurations of the monitored apparatuses in respective stations are different, the configuration information needs to be changed in accordance with each of monitored apparatuses to be connected, in each monitor and control terminal. Since the apparatus configurations are different in the stations, the configuration information that is set in the monitor and control terminal has to be managed in every station.
In the optical transmission system, the history of operations and the history of recovery of error generation in each monitored apparatus, the history of operations in the monitor and control apparatus, and the like are displayed on the screen as the character data items and stored inside. When some apparatus failures occur in the system or apparatuses, the stored character data items are used for diagnosis of the cause.
Further, the monitor and control terminal for monitoring and controlling the monitored apparatus by using the multi-window system, has a mounting drawing of the sub-rack level about the type of boards mounted in each of the sub-racks constituting the monitored apparatus and the order in mounting of the boards in the sub-rack, as the screen information. When the monitored apparatus informs the monitor and control terminal of the apparatus failure, the monitor and control terminal automatically opens the window which displays the mounting drawing of the sub-rack level including the board where the failure has occurred, and allows the display of the failure board to be blinked on the mounting drawing of the sub-rack level or allows its display colors to be changed so as to make the point of the failure visually understood. When a plurality of apparatus failures occur, the windows displaying a plurality of the mounting drawings of the sub-rack level are opened on the screen in the number necessary for display of the failures and the points of the failures are displayed in the window by using the mounting drawing of each sub-rack.
As mentioned above, the conventional monitor and control system has the problem that when the apparatus configurations of the monitored apparatuses are different in stations, the generated configuration information is changed and managed for every station in the monitor and control terminal to be connected to each monitored apparatus, therefore, the development of the monitor and control terminal takes a great deal of time. It also has a drawback that once the configuration information is determined, the monitor and control terminal cannot connect to the monitored apparatus which has the different apparatus configuration.
In the conventional monitor and control system, the history of operations and the history of recovery of error generation in each monitored apparatus, the history of operations in the monitor and control apparatus, and the like are displayed as the character data items on the screen, other than a screen displaying the latest state. Therefore, the operator need to read the data while tracing back the character data items listed in the order of time. Further, it is difficult to immediately obtain the information about whether any changes in condition have happened to the apparatus or not while the operator is absent, what they were if they have happened and at what timing they have happened and transferred to the present condition.
When the conventional monitor and control system reads the generated condition of a plurality of failures that generate almost simultaneously at each monitored apparatus and that have different severities on different sub-racks, a window displaying the failure having a low severity may be displayed on a window displaying the failure having a high severity since the monitor and control terminal displays the windows in the order of the reading process, and thus, the operator cannot easily understand that a failure having a higher severity has occurred. In addition, in a case where a plurality of failures having different severities have happened almost simultaneously at the different sub-racks, if the monitored apparatus first informs a failure which has happened at a certain subrack with a high severity and then a failure which has happened at a different sub-rack with a lower severity, the monitor and control terminal first displays the window having a higher severity which it has first received and then displays the window having a lower severity which it has received secondly on the displayed window having a higher severity, and thus, the operator cannot easily understand the occurrence of the failure having a higher severity.
The present invention is accomplished in consideration of the above circumstances, and its object is to provide an access management method capable of limiting access of a monitor and control apparatus to a communications apparatus, and the communications apparatus.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a monitor and control system capable of flexibly responding to differences in apparatus configuration of monitored apparatuses and certainly monitoring failures, by reading configuration information from the monitored apparatuses, and by generating and displaying summary screens of the monitored apparatuses on the basis of the configuration information.
The other object of the present invention is to provide monitor and control system capable of easily obtaining various kinds of history information and information about state variations in the apparatuses, by displaying the state variations in the monitored apparatuses on the same screen as a monitoring screen to be displayed when the state variations are detected.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a monitor and control system allowing an operator to easily recognize that a failure with a higher severity is occurring.
The present invention provides a management method of an access from a monitor and control apparatus to communications apparatuses, in a network system comprising a plurality of communications apparatuses forming a network and a monitor and control apparatus for monitoring and controlling the network. The access management method comprises: a first step of obtaining identification information of the monitor and control apparatus requesting the access when a request for access from the monitor and control apparatus to the communications apparatuses is generated; a second step of searching for a first table in which a level of the monitor and control apparatus corresponds preliminarily to the identification information of the monitor and control apparatus, by using the identification information obtained at the first step as a key, and for obtaining the level of the monitor and control apparatus requesting the access; a third step of extracting a control function which the monitor ad control apparatus requests, and an operation type for the control function, from a request message received from the monitor and control apparatus; and a fourth step of searching a second table in which a permitted level of the monitor and control apparatus preliminarily corresponds to each of types of operations executed for the control function, by using the control function and the operation type obtained at the third step and the level of the monitor and control apparatus obtained at the third step as keys, and for determining permission of the request for access.
The first step preferably includes a step of obtaining the identification information of the monitor and control apparatus requesting the access, from information used when the communications apparatus establishes a communication connection with the monitor and control apparatus requesting the access or from the request message.
The plurality of communications apparatuses are preferably connected in a shape of a ring via a transmission connection to form a ring network.
According to the present invention, a communications apparatus, in a network system comprising a plurality of communications apparatuses for forming a network and a monitor and control apparatus for monitoring and controlling the network, is provided. The communications apparatus comprises: identification means for obtaining identification information of the monitor and control apparatus requesting an access when a request for access from the monitor and control apparatus to its own apparatus is generated; first storage means for storing a first table in which a level of the monitor and control apparatus corresponds preliminarily to the identification information of the monitor and control apparatus; level determination means for searching for the first table by using the identification information obtained by the identification means as a key and for obtaining the level of the monitor and control apparatus requesting the access; extraction means for extracting control functions requested by the monitor and control apparatus and types of operations for the control function, from a request message received from the monitor and control apparatus; second storage means for storing a second table in which a permitted level of the monitor and control apparatus corresponds preliminarily to each of types of operations executed for the respective control functions; and access determination means for searching for the second table by using the control functions and the operation types extracted by the extraction means, and the level of the monitor and control apparatus obtained by the level determination means, as keys, and for determining whether the access request can be permitted or not.
The identification means preferably obtains the identification information of the monitor and control apparatus requesting the access, from information used to establish a communication connection to the monitor and control apparatus requesting the access or from the request message.
In the present invention, when a monitor and control apparatus in the network requests an access to a communications apparatus, identification information of the monitor and control apparatus is fist obtained in the communications apparatus, and the level of the monitor and control apparatus corresponding to identification information is determined. The first table is stored preliminarily in each of communications apparatus in which the levels of the monitor and control apparatuses are defined as seen from each of the communications apparatuses such that the monitor and control apparatus of the same communications carrier has a higher level and that of the other communications carriers has a lower level, and the level determination is executed on the basis of the first table.
On the other hand, the function of the communications apparatuses to which the monitor and control apparatus requests for accessing, and the operation type for the function are extracted from the access request received by the communications apparatus. The second table is stored preliminarily in each of the communications apparatus in which permission of the operation is defined in connection with each function, in every level of the monitor and control apparatus. Finally, the permission of the transmitted access request is determined on the basis of the second table, by employing the determined level, and the extracted function and its operation type as the keys.
That is, the information items respectively representing (a) the monitor and control apparatus requesting an access; (b) the requested function; and (c) the requested operation, are obtained, and permission of the transmitted access request is determined in accordance with these information items.
With this function, the communications apparatus can permit access from the monitor and control apparatus of each communications carrier to the function which needs to be executed commonly to a plurality of communications carriers, and can also permit access from the only monitor and control apparatus of a specific communications carrier, to the functions peculiar to the respective communications carriers, but reject access from the other monitor and control apparatuses thereto.
According to another viewpoint of the present invention, a monitor and control system comprising a network constituted by a plurality of monitored apparatus, and one or more of monitor and control terminals for monitoring and controlling the respective monitored apparatuses, is provided. Each of the monitored apparatuses in this monitor and control system comprises means for detecting an apparatus configuration and supplying configuration information, and means for transmitting the configuration information to the monitor and control terminals. Each of the monitor and control terminals comprises means for receiving the configuration information from the monitored apparatus, and means for displaying a summary screen of the monitored apparatus on the basis of the received configuration information.
That is, in the present invention, the monitored apparatus detects the apparatus configuration such as expansion of racks and shelves by employing, for example, DIP switches, generates the configuration information representing the apparatus configuration, and transmits the configuration information to the monitor and control terminal. The monitor and control terminal displays the summary screen of the monitored apparatus on the basis of the configuration information. As explained above, since the summary screen is generated on the basis of the information representing the apparatus configuration, obtained from the monitored apparatus, the summary screen can be easily changed in accordance with the apparatus configuration of the monitored apparatus, and monitoring and controlling can be executed by connecting the terminal to the monitored apparatuses having different apparatus configurations.
According to the other viewpoint of the present invention, a monitor and control system comprising a network constituted by a plurality of monitored apparatus, and one or more of monitor and control terminals for monitoring and controlling the respective monitored apparatuses, is provided. Each of the monitored apparatuses in the monitor and control system comprises: means for collecting state history data; and means for transmitting the state history data to the monitor and control terminals. Each of the monitor and control terminals comprises: means for receiving the state history data from the monitored apparatus at any time or at any time interval; means for detecting data meeting preset conditions from the received state history data; means for generating and managing a screen representing a state of the monitored apparatus in accordance with the detected state history data; and means for displaying a plurality of screens managed by the managing means together with latest screens, in any order.
Further, according to the other viewpoint of the present invention, a monitor and control system comprising a network constituted by a plurality of monitored apparatus, and one or more of monitor and control terminals for monitoring and controlling the respective monitored apparatuses, is provided. Each of the monitor and control terminals in the monitor and control system comprises: means for reading information about states of one or more of failures occurring in the monitored apparatuses, via communication means; means for comparing severities in a plurality of failures read from the respective monitored apparatuses with one another and determining order of priority for the window display; means for displaying winds so that a window of higher priority overlaps on a window of lower priority in accordance with the determined order of priority in the window display.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out hereinafter.